The ACT Greens Senate Candidate, Simon Sheikh, says that he doesn’t expect that the Liberal party will stop fighting, despite last night’s win by the extreme right wing of the Liberal Party. He has reissued his request to debate the winner of the Liberal Party preselection on the issue of the impacts of Tony Abbott’s job cuts on Canberra’s families.

“Given the events of the last three months, Canberrans can rightfully conclude that the Liberal party care more about fighting for their own jobs then the jobs of Canberra’s families,” Mr Sheikh said.

“Canberrans now have a real choice at this year’s election, between voting for someone who supports Tony Abbott’s plan to cut 20,000 jobs in the ACT, which will devastate our small business and house prices — or someone who will fight these jobs cuts” said Mr Sheikh.

Mr Sheikh says he’s surprised Zed Seselja has so quickly abandoned the people of Tuggeranong who he is supposed to represent in the Assembly. “The people of Tuggeranong have every right to be annoyed that Mr Seselja is abandoning his electorate, seemingly to gain more power for himself”.

The ACT Greens are receiving an influx of donations and volunteers just as the Liberals show signs of struggling to get organised at this election. Last Sunday over 150 people turned out for the first volunteer ‘Meet Up’ event of the campaign.

It will be interesting to see how many of the Liberal party faithful are willing to put the hard yards in for candidate Seselja

Here is Simon Sheik’s December 2012 manifesto on why he is running for the Senate – it its entirety. Note the complete lack of any reference to Canberrans other than ACT Greens. Also note Sheikh’s criticisms are directed solely at the LIberals, and no criticism whatsoever of Labor – “responsible bipartisan voice” much? What you’d expect, of course, from Mr “Union Patsy of GetUp”. Also note the fudging of his actual time in Canberra: “about a third” of four years. That is to say, he has NEVER lived here and spent a total in dribs and drabs of a few days at time lobbying for Getup and the unions in Canberra, and there is no mention of just how recently he decided to “move to Canberra” – was that decision to move to Canberra made purely because of the decision to run for the Senate? Nothing in his manifesto indicates otherwise!

“After several months exploring Australia’s remote national parks with my wife Anna, I’m back in Canberra and have decided to seek preselection for the ACT Senate with the Greens.

“Seeing Australia’s beauty and biodiversity on my honeymoon made me even more determined to do everything I can to protect our precious natural environment and help Australia address the threat of climate change.

“Anna and I have spent a lot of time in Canberra and have grown to love and become part of this community. After spending about a third of my time here over the past four years, we recently made a permanent move to begin the next phase of our life here. I’m excited about deepening our Canberra ties even further through the Greens’ preselection process.

“As a young child growing up in public housing, I was surrounded by the kind of poverty and inequality you wouldn’t expect to see in a country like Australia.

“These early experiences taught me that we don’t always live in the land of the fair go, and I decided early on that I wanted to do my part to make things better.

“As I got older, I saw that the political process could deliver wins for real people, but too many politicians were putting short-term interests before the long-term issues for Australia’s future.

“I’ve decided to run for Senate preselection with the Greens because I share their values of environmental sustainability, grassroots democracy, social justice and peace and nonviolence. I am particularly concerned about the impacts that climate change is having on Australia. I believe we have the opportunity to do much more to reduce our carbon pollution and move to a clean energy future.

“Canberra’s Senate seat sits on a knife’s edge. It will be a tough campaign, but it’s winnable. If less than 1500 people who voted Liberal last election switch their vote to the Greens, we will change the course of the country by stopping Tony Abbott seizing one-party control of both houses of Parliament. Last time this happened, the Liberals introduced Workchoices and had a blank slate to impose their agenda on Canberra and the nation without checks and balances.

“As a former Treasury public servant myself, one of the issues I’m passionate about is good government. Good government requires a strong public sector workforce, which is why I’m passionate about stopping Tony Abbott’s job cuts.

“Last time the Liberals came in, John Howard slashed the public service by tens of thousands of jobs. Now, Queensland’s Liberal Premier Campbell Newman has set a target of cutting 14,000 jobs. When you also consider Barry O’Farrell and Ted Baillieu’s job cuts, the Liberals’ agenda is clear.

“Next election, Canberrans have the opportunity to stop Tony Abbott seizing control of both houses of Parliament.

“This is an important campaign and that’s why I’m putting my hat in the ring. I’ve enjoyed the process of meeting with ACT Greens members so far and look forward to continuing it over the next few weeks.”

“Canberrans now have a real choice at this year’s election, between voting for someone who supports Tony Abbott’s plan to cut 20,000 jobs in the ACT, which will devastate our small business and house prices — or someone who will fight these jobs cuts” said Mr Sheikh.

Amidst all of this carry on, I have not seen or heard anything about policy differences between Humphries and Sesselja. It looks to me like another instance of the phenomenon embodied in this eye-catchingly entitled tome: http://www.plutoaustralia.com/p1/default.asp?pageId=352 – which is, to a considerable degree, a whinge about the oldies hogging the best real estate. In this case, the coveted real estate being a patch of puce leather (and the juicy emoluments going with it) in the Senate chamber.

To recover from this shambles, I think Zed might need to do something radical – going to China didn’t hurt Nixon in ’72, so perhaps Zed, from the safety of his white picket fence bastion, could follow Kelly O’Dwyer’s recent lead and proclaim that he is “comfortable with the idea of same-sex marriage”. That would certainly liven things up, and might cut some of the ground from underneath Simon Sheikh

As to the Pogos, better, I suppose, to have gone out with a bang, of sorts, rather than a whimper – so we’ll (po)go no more a roving……

I suspect that regardless of this infighting, Mr Sheikh still has a considerable uphill battle on his hands. It’d be a different matter if this was an election where the Liberal tide was going out rather than coming in.

It worked out how I thought it would. Zed now has to actually throw himself on the pyre and see if he survives. There’s no way his little schoolboy cronies can help him with this one. I’m hoping he gets soundly beaten, and yes, probably by a Green. Can’t be any worse than what we’ve had. And the fact remains that Simon Sheikh knows the ways of the world – he’s not a dirndl wearing, henna dyed greeny that fell out of their tree house yesterday or as unrealistic and uninspiring as Christine Milne. So that doesn’t bother me.

One would hope that everyone has learned a lesson from this debacle. I hope Zed has to go into the real world and compete for a job with many others who are much more qualified, suitable and likeable.

Jeremy must be dying for him to go, and Tuggers is probably counting the days until they can put their number against whomever runs number two on the ticket or Simon Sheikh. Do we know who that might be? A young lib having a tilt?